A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

  One odd fact about Harriet’s suicide, which is not easily explained, is that Godwin’s journal records her death as 9 November 1816; this was the last day she was seen alive, but it would be another month before her body was found.

  The intriguing thing here, for me, was that in the case of both of these suicides a person or persons unknown seems to have intervened to conceal the identity of the two young women, and hush up the scandal as far as possible. Someone removed the name from Fanny Imlay’s suicide note, someone oversaw her interment; someone seems to have arranged for Harriet to be buried under her assumed name, and ensured that there was only the briefest reporting of her drowning in the press. When I read these accounts I saw at once that I could create a fictional story in which Maddox becomes that unseen hand. Of course there is no evidence that Godwin ever employed such a person.

  As I said, I have given Harriet’s suicide note exactly as it was written. There is nothing to suggest that she had another paper with her when she was found—that is my own invention.

  ELENA SHELLEY

  This is the second of Holmes’ biographical mysteries, and has also attracted enormous speculation. Shelley registered the birth of this little girl in Naples on 27 February 1819, stating that he was the father and Mary the mother. The latter was patently untrue, but many people believe Elena was indeed Shelley’s daughter, either by Claire, or by the Shelleys’ maid, Elise. The evidence is problematic in both cases, and it may be that the baby was in fact, as I suggest, no child of Shelley’s at all. It is certainly true that there was (as Mary recorded in her journal) a “most tremendous fuss” on the day of their departure from Naples, and that she appears to have rejected the child, though why, we do not know. The baby remained in Naples, at the Foundling Hospital, and died there on 9 June 1820. It is a fascinating subject, but too complicated to deal with adequately here, so again I refer interested readers to the Holmes and Seymour accounts.

  THE LAST DAYS AT LERICI

  Shelley’s last days were haunted by the visions I describe, including those in which he believed he saw his own doppelgänger. I have taken my description of his last moments on board the Don Juan from contemporary accounts. There is no actual evidence he was planning to leave Mary at this time, but as early as 1820 he had contemplated an expedition to the East without her (and probably with Claire). The marriage was certainly miserable in those last months, and Mary cursed the day as “hateful” when she discovered she was once again pregnant. A friend staying at the house was indeed suspicious of Mary’s first phantom miscarriage at Lerici, and when she later lost the baby Shelley almost certainly saved her life by forcing her to sit for hours in a bath of ice until the bleeding stopped. There is, however, nothing in the records to suggest that the miscarriage was the result of a fall.

  As with The Solitary House, I drew on a number of books and resources for my portrayal of nineteenth-century London, including Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, Charles Dickens’ “On Duty with Inspector Field,” Jerry White’s London in the Nineteenth Century, and the excellent website www.victorianlondon.org.

  I am grateful to Nigel Wilson, Emeritus Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford, for his help in the translation from Aristotle in chapter 10.

  I am grateful to be able to include the full text of Harriet Shelley’s note on this page, which is quoted by permission of The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation, Inc.

  I would also like to thank the first readers of this book who gave me invaluable insight and support, most especially my husband, Simon, my friend and former tutor Professor Stephen Gill, and Tom Atherton.

  And finally my gratitude, as always, to my excellent agent, Ben Mason, and my two wonderful editors, Kate Miciak and Krystyna Green.

  This – this is not to be forgot –

  He met himself, walking in the garden

  without thee, can I tell my woes?

  And with thee, can I speak my grief?

  Shall I wake then those horrors anew

  That swelled in my desperate brain

  When to death’s darkened portals I flew

  And sought misery’s relief to my pain?

  Fiends would relent

  Knew they the snares that there for memory lay

  That stream so swift that rushes along

  Has oft been dyed by the murderer’s song;

  It oft has heard the exulting wave

  Of one who oft the murderer braved.

  See that fair form that he can save.

  Her garments are tattered, her bosom so bare?

  She shrinks from the yawning watery grave.

  And, shivering, around her enwraps her dark hair.

  The breath of night like death did flow

  Beneath the sinking moon.

  The wintry hedge was black,

  The green grass was not seen,

  Thine eyes glowed in the glare

  Of the moon’s dying light,

  As a fen-fire’s beam

  On a sluggish stream

  Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,

  And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair

  The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;

  The wind made thy bosom chill;

  The night did shed

  On thy dear head

  Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie

  Where the bitter breath of the naked sky

  Might visit thee at will.

  His grief remained – let it remain – untold –

  Then hear thy chosen own, too late,

  His heart most worthy of thy hate

  For pale with anguish is his cheek

  His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim

  In mercy let him not endure

  The misery of a fatal cure

  Ianthe will remain with you always

  Dear lovely child -

  He bears a load which nothing can remove

  A killing, withering weight

  O thou, whose radiant eyes and beamy smile

  Yet even a sweeter somewhat indexing —

  Have known full many an hour of mine to guile

  Which else would only bitter memories bring

  Would I were as sinless fair and young

  As innocent of sorrow & of shame

  As those who in thy cold embraces sleep

  Ere misery has made my living corpse

  Too bitter food for thee

  It is not true – the past may come again –

  Full many a mind with radiant genius fraught

  Is taught the dark scowl of misery to bear;

  How many a great soul has often sought

  To stem the sad torrent of wild despair

  The waters close and leave no trace

  BACK

  BY LYNN SHEPHERD

  A Fatal Likeness

  The Solitary House

  Murder at Mansfield Park

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LYNN SHEPHERD is the author of the award-winning Murder at Mansfield Park. She studied English at Oxford and was a professional copywriter for more than a decade. She is currently at work on her next novel of historical suspense, Darkness Visible, which Delacorte will publish in 2014.

  www.lynn-shepherd.com

  FRANKENSTEIN

  MARY SHELLEY

  With an Introduction by Diane Johnson

  BANTAM CLASSIC

  FRANKENSTEIN

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Frankenstein was first published in 1818

  First Bantam edition published June 1967

  Bantam Classic edition published October 1981

  Bantam reissue edition / October 2003

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  All rights reserved

  Introduction copyright © 1981 by Bantam Books

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, el
ectronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks

  of Random House, Inc.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  eISBN: 978-0-553-89803-3

  v3.0_r1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Author’s Introduction

  Preface

  Letters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Notes

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Ask Your Bookseller for These Bantam Classics

  INTRODUCTION

  by Diane Johnson

  Mary Shelley was born in August 1797 to Mary Wollestonecraft, the great feminist, and William Godwin, the political philosopher, two lovers who were opposed in principle to marriage and occupied separate houses. They compromised their principles for the sake of their forthcoming child, but married happiness was shortlived; Mary Wollestonecraft died of puerperal fever eleven days after Mary’s birth, and the baby was raised by Godwin, who soon took another wife, a Mrs. Clairmont. The Godwin household therefore consisted of the parents, the new Mrs. Godwin’s two children Charles and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s half-sister Fanny Imlay (Mary Wollestonecraft’s daughter by an earlier liaison), her half-brother William, Godwin’s child by the new wife, and Mary, the whole living modestly from Godwin’s writings and a small publishing business.

  In this large and ill-assorted family, Mary grew up, as her father described her, “singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverence in everything she undertakes almost invincible.” He adds that she is also very pretty. It is not known which of these qualities most affected the poet Shelley, but the ensemble was irresistible.

  Mary read much and eagerly as a child, and was allowed to read what she wanted. In addition she was enabled to observe the many famous literary men of the day who frequented her father’s circle: Lamb and Coleridge were among them, and eventually the young Percy Bysshe Shelley, who admired her father. She was familiar of course with the writings and ideas of her parents, with the classics and the new Romantic poetry, and with the standard gothic novels. It is not surprising that she should make her own contribution, the masterpiece of the genre (or the cornerstone of another, science fiction), when she was not yet nineteen, at an age when her own sensibilities were responsive to scary stories, and when the actual events of her life were hardly less painful and shattering than the gruesome fancies she recounts.

  In the summer of 1814, just before her seventeenth birthday, Shelley and his young wife Harriet made frequent visits to the Godwin household. He and Mary fell passionately in love and eloped, an action which, according to the principles of free love they all except Harriet believed in, was sanctified by a higher law, since Shelley no longer loved his wife; he found her far less interesting than the intellectual, serious, and beautiful child of two famous radicals.

  Mary’s first child by Shelley was born at seven months in February 1815 and died soon afterward. She was depressed by its death and brooded and dreamed about it. Her next child, William, was born eleven months later, in January 1816. It was the summer after William’s birth, while they were staying in a villa near Lake Geneva, that she had the idea for Frankenstein. By the second anniversary of her alliance with Shelley she had been pregnant most of the time and given birth twice. In October, while she was writing the early parts of her novel, her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, committed suicide, and in December Shelley’s wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine. And Mary at about the same time became pregnant for the third time. She was to lose both this child and William. These terrible events and apprehensions account for the preoccupation with the solemn terrors of giving birth which form a central motif of her novel.

  In a preface to a later edition, Mary Shelley recollected how she “then a young girl came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea.” It is a famous story. While staying at the Villa Diodati near Geneva, the Shelleys, and their neighbors, Lord Byron and his doctor, Polidori, were compelled by the “wet, ungenial” weather to spend a great deal of time indoors, time which they spent reading ghost stories and discussing “various philosophical doctrines,” among others “the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated.” The party, comprised after all of talented writers, agreed that each would write a ghost story of his own. For some days Mary Shelley tried to think of hers, and each morning, upon being asked whether she had thought of one, was obliged to say no; but one night, after the company had been discussing galvanism and the reanimation of corpses, her night was fitfully disturbed, and “far beyond the usual bounds of reverie” the ideas and images came to her. Many artists have reported this experience of creative work in a state between sleep and waking, on a problem which has been worrying them, but hers is one of the most complete accounts of the emergence of a literary work from the unconscious into the conscious mind.

  “When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, lifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.” She awakes in terror, and tries to dispel the horrid vision of Dr. Frankenstein awaking to find the creature standing at his bedside. Only after a few moments does she realize that she had found her idea for a ghost story, and, ultimately, her husband urges her to expand this vision into a long tale.

  The composition extended over several months, and was often interrupted by other activities and plans. In July Mary and Shelley traveled in the Alps; later, her work was interrupted by their grief over the deaths of first Fanny, and then Harriet. In December of 1816 she and Shelley married at the advice of his lawyers, who hoped their legal union would further his attempts to get custody of his two children by Harriet. In December she notes that she had just finished chapter four, but the entire work was finished by May, 1817, and corrected by Shelley, who wrote a short preface in the persona of the anonymous author, and sent it off, first to Byron’s publisher, John Murray, who turned it down, then to his own publisher, Ollier, who also turned it down. It was finally taken by the third publisher, Lakington, Allen and Co., after some negotiations, also undertaken by Shelley in behalf of his anonymous “friend.” The work was not signed, but was dedicated to William Godwin, which made some people suppose that the author might be Shelley, whose admiration of Godwin was well known.

  The reception was mixed. The Edinburgh Review proclaimed that “taste and judgement alike revolted at this kind of writing,” and “the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is—it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manner or morality; it cannot mend, and will not even amuse its readers unless their tastes have been deplorably vitiated.” But the influential Sir Walter Scott, writing in Blackwood’s Edinburgh magazine, says that the work impressed “with the high idea of the author’s original genius and happy power of expression.” Despite any unfavorable reviews, the boo
k was a great success; Thomas Love Peacock reported to the Shelleys that it seemed to be universally known and talked of.

  By the time she had finished writing Frankenstein, Mary had lost one child, but worse losses were to follow. A baby girl, Clara, was born in September 1817, and died the following September. The next spring William died. Another child, Percy Florence, was born in September. Mary next suffered a dangerous miscarriage. Finally, in the summer of 1822, while they were living in Pisa, Shelley himself, with two companions, was drowned in a storm while sailing on the Bay of Lerici. Eleven days after they were presumed to have perished, their badly decomposed bodies washed ashore, and were burned on a funeral pyre, except for Shelley’s heart, which was snatched from the flames and eventually buried in Rome.

  At the time of this ultimate tragedy Mary was not quite twenty-five and would live to be fifty-four. Her life was not to be happy. As her early years had been torn by difficulties and drama, her later years were, it must seem, oppressively calm. No further losses, but also no further adventures or successes awaited her. Percy Florence did not die; he grew up to inherit the estate and title that would have been his father’s. But he did not prove literary or an intellectual and was perhaps a little disappointing to his earnest and intense mother. She did not marry again, although brief courtships, one with Washington Irving, are reported. She lived modestly by her pen, producing other novels, only one of which (The Last Man) retains any admirers, numerous stories, and some editions of Shelley’s work, valuably annotated.